by Washington (AP) – A procedure against foreign students are alarming universities who say that the Trump government uses new tactics and vague justifications to push some students out of the country.
College officials fear that the new approach will prevent foreigners from studying in the United States
The students who have withdrawn their entry -level visa receive orders from the Ministry of Homeland Protection to leave the country immediately – a break from previous practices, which often enabled them to complete their studies and complete their studies.
Some students were geared towards pro-Palestinian activism or criminal violations or even traffic violations. Others wondered how they got against the government.
At Minnesota State University in Mankato, President Edward Inch told campus on Wednesday that Visa had been revoked for five international students due to unclear reasons.
He said school officials had received a database from the revocation after a Turkish student at the University of Minnesota in Minnesota in Minneapolis when they carried out a status check in a database of international students. The Foreign Ministry said that the detention was associated with a drunk drive conviction.
“These are worrying times, and this situation is different from everyone we have previously navigated,” wrote Inch in a letter on campus.
President Donald Trump made a promise to deport foreign students who are involved in Pro-Palestinian protests, and the federal agents began with the detention of the doctoral student of Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, a Green-Kard holder and Palestinian activist who was prominent in protests in Columbia last year. Foreign Minister Marco Rubio said that the students were involved in the participation in protests together with others who are associated with “potential criminal activities” last week.
The government has apparently expanded its approach in the past two weeks. Civil servants of universities across the country have found that international students have revoked their entry visa and in many cases have ended their legal residence status without notice – including students of the state of Arizona, Cornell, North Carolina State, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas and the University of Colorado.
Some of the students are working on leaving the country alone, but students of the Tufts and the University of Alabama were arrested by immigration authorities – in the case of Tufts, before the university knew that the student’s legal status had changed.
Feds bypass Colleges to switch against students
In this new wave of enforcement, school officials say that the federal government deletes tacit study documents from foreigners instead of going through colleges, as was done in the past.
The student is instructed to leave the country with a suddenness that the universities have rarely seen, said Miriam Feldblum, President and CEO of President Allianz for Higher Education and Immigration.
In the past, when international students had revoked entry -level visa, they were generally allowed to maintain the status of the legal residence. You could stay in the country to study, but you would have to renew your visa if you wanted to leave and return the United States. The increasing number of students has now terminated its legal status and shows the risk of being arrested.
“None of this is regular practice,” said Feldblum.
At North Carolina State University, two students from Saudi Arabia were left the United States after learning their legal status as students, the university said. The NC State said it would work with the students to complete their semester outside the country.
Philip Vasto, who lived with one of the students, said his roommate in the Graduate School for Engineering Management was apolitical and had no protests against the war in Gaza. When the government was informed of his roommate that his student status had ended, it gave no reason, said Vasto.
Since his return to Saudi Arabia, Vasto said that his former roommate was getting the main concerns in another university.
“He made peace with it,” he said. “He doesn’t want to allow his peace to continue.”
Database reviews will appear in danger
At the University of Texas in Austin, the employees who checked a federal database discovered two people in student visa who had permission to be terminated in the United States, a person who was familiar with the situation. The person refused to be identified for fear of retribution.
One of the people from India had their legal status terminated on April 3. The federal system stated that the person in a criminal register -check was revoked “and/or their visa”. The other person from the Lebanon ended their legal status on March 28, according to the federal database, due to a review of the records.
Both people were graduates in the USA in student visa and used an option with which people were able to gain professional experience after completing the courses. Both were full -time and apparently had no requirements for persecution of professional experience, said the person familiar with the situation.
Some students were revoked Visa by the Foreign Ministry according to an obscure law, which did not have “serious disadvantageous foreign policy consequences”. Trump arrived in January in January to request measures against campus anti -Semitism.
Some students who have been targeted in the past few weeks have had no clear connection with political activism. Some were instructed to leave offices or traffic violations, said Feldblum. In some cases, the students were aimed at violations that had previously been reported to the government.
Some of the alleged violations have not undergone an exam in the past and will probably be a test for the rights of the first changes to the students if cases work out by the court, said Michelle Mittelstadt, director of public affairs at the Migration Policy Institute.
“In a way, what the administration does is really retrospectively,” she said. “Instead of saying: ‘This will be the standard that we will apply in the future,’ they will go back and check the students who are based on earlier expressions or previous behaviors.”
The Association for Public and Land’s largest universities requests a meeting with the Foreign Ministry about the problem. It is unclear whether more visas are revoked than usual, but the officials fear that a terrifying effect will affect international exchange.
Many members of the association have recently seen that at least one student has revoked their visas, said Bernie Burrola, a vice president of the group. With little information from the government, the universities interviewed students or sought social media for a connection to political activism.
“The universities don’t seem to find anything that has to do with Gaza or Social Media Posts or Protests,” said Burrola. “Some of them are sponsored students from foreign governments in whom they are expressly hesitant to participate in protests.”
There is no clear thread that indicates which students are targeted, but some come from the Middle East and China, he said.
America’s universities have long been viewed as the top goal for the brightest heads in the world -and they have brought US universities with important income and research research results. According to Fanta AW, CEO of NAFSA, an association of international educators, international students also have other options.
“We shouldn’t be a matter of course that things are so and will always be,” she said.
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Steve Karnowski in Associated Press material in St. Paul, Minnesota and Angeliki Kastanis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
